Democrats are saying "Screw Them."

<<I would also appreciate a president who didn't have to constantly invoke God as a means of justification.>>

Now we're getting to the root of your problems with Bush.

 

Yes. Read the news stories, and you'll see that when we kill "insurgents", they are very often not from Iraq. The vast majority of Iraqis welcomed us, and want us to stay. How quickly we forget the pictures of Iraqis stomping on photos of Saddam and welcoming US troops.

Not really. The terrorists will be hunted down & wiped out....thier fate will not be so attractive to everyone else.

We can fight the terrorists in Iraq & Afghanistan, or we can fight them in the United States. Which do you prefer?

 

What BS

This statement has been proven BS many times over. Fact, in Vietnam, minorities were killed at a rate less than their representation in society. In today's Army, minorities make up a larger portion of the force than they represent in society except for in the combat arms jobs. There, they are underrepresented. Also, a review of the people who joined the military in my home town would reveal that they come from all spectrums of economic class. My family is one of those Al Gore called rich but my daughter just joined the Air Force. Maybe she missed that part where it was only for the poor, minority kids.

Let me tell you the truth as someone who spent some time recruiting. Recruiters in very poor neighborhoods have more than enough volunteers but still struggle to make their mission because it is difficult to find candidates that have a diploma, can pass the tests and have a clean record. The easiest stations to make mission are in solid middle class areas where kids can be motivated by patriotism and a sense of adventure.

Again this is the voice of experience speaking. What is your experience?

 

My own preference is we take the fight straight to the heart of the enemy. I have no problem with that, given the evil nature of our radical Islamic opponents, and their absolute lack of concern for the welfare of any US (or Israeli, even more so) citizen.

However, my issue again is whether Bush is competent to lead this effort. I do not think he is. I'm not sure Kerry is the man, but there's a part of me that feels that almost anyone would do a better job.

I've commented (in jest) that if the Democrats dug up the mouldering corpse of Woodrow Wilson, I'd vote for that rather than Bush - assuming the corpse would have good advisers. At least we wouldn't have a leader with half a brain making life and death decisions that affect future generations of the entire world for eons to come.

 

As much as I would like to believe that statement I can't. Basically, because we can't even win the war on drugs. For every drug dealer that you squash another one shows up. I feel that the same can be said for Terrorists as well.

I am not sure what should be done in Iraq, but I really wish a few other countries would help out.

 

Re: What BS

This all sounds entirely truthful to me Chris, though we are often at opposite sides in this debate.

 

We could win the war on drugs very easily, if we killed, on-sight, every drug dealer we found.

I guarantee that policy would eliminate the pool of replacements. Same for the terrorists....kill them, and they stop trying to kill us.

 

I assume...

you are including alcohol on your list of "drugs"?

Or, if not, maybe we should just legalize pot and eliminate 2/3 of the "problem" overnight.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good Response

I have respect for those who had the guts to object to the war on moral principles, instead of blindly following a government that insisted it was a noble effort (it wasn't). I also have respect for those who served. I don't have respect for those without the compunction to take either side and who rely on money and privilege to find a way out.

Proof? Of course you'll never accept it as such, but start here with a story from the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7372-2004Feb2?language=printer

It's not just the military, but in virtually every aspect of his life. Who gets into HBS with a C average as an undergrad? How did he get into Yale in the fist place? Daddy. His first jobs running oil companies (into the ground) were handed to him.

As far as casualties, your statement about the overwhelming majority of white casualties is misleading. About 86% of casualties were white. The minority population during those years was about 12.5% of the total. So minorities were slightly overrepresented among all casualties. Of course I said "poor and minority." When you include those from lower class and lower middle class backgrounds, the majority were indeed poor and minority. Whites are poor too. I don't think you are saying the overwhelming majority of casualties were upper class whites, are you?

 

Re: I assume...

If we are going to be that harsh, then we should kill everyone at the liquor stores too.

 

Re: Re: I assume...

Amen.

The thing that really troubles me about Bruce's post about "killing drug dealers on sight" is what it reveals about the academically trained criminal justice mind - not much concern for due process, democracy, or human rights there, despite the torrent of responses I'm sure my posting this will bring from the Bush camp on this board. I guess "drug dealers" and "terrorists" aren't really human beings after all - so now the right-wing crowd has also redefined human biology.

Sounds like something someone did in Germany once about 70 years ago? Apparently we have a new "untermenschen" to exterminate - drug dealers and terrorists. I guess it beats killing Jews.

 

These figures are misleading

These are casualty figures. This includes accidents in the war zones. The military is a hazardous job peace or war. Combat casualties are another matter. The Army Times recently published those numbers and those figures revealed numbers overrepresenting non-minorities. Not that what causes the death makes any difference to the grief.

The minority casualty rate was 12.5% not the population. The population of young black males was pegged at 11% there was no number for total population.

These numbers reflect current trends where blacks are overrepresented in the military but underrepresented in the combat arms. That is because many blacks look at the military as a career and will sign up for suport jobs whereas those going into combat arms tend to look for short term things like college money, adventure etc.

Frankly, those numbers do not reflect ill either way. Just goes to show that many blacks view the military as a career (like I did) and that the claim that minorities bear the brunt of casualties is a myth. But if you like statistics, another one the Army Times put out showed that even when combat casualties were thrown in over the past decade, minority males in the military had much lower rates of violent death than their civilian counterparts. Could this have some impact on their decisions to join the military?

 

Re: These figures are misleading

No. These are the figures from the National Archives and Records Administration.


American Indian 226
Caucasian 50,120
Malayan 252
Mongolian 116
Negro 7,264
Unknown, Not Reported 215
Total 58,193

Thus non-Caucasion casualties are 13.9%.

Non-Caucasion census figures for the population (as of 1970) are 12.5% (this from www.census.gov). Again, my claim is not that minorities bear the brunt, but that minorities AND the lower class do. Now that the draft is voluntary, this trend is even more the case.

 

Re: These figures are misleading

No argument here. Though I'm not sure what your point is. Is it surprising that poor minorities (and poor whites) turn to the military as a way out? The voluntary military banks on this now. Without a large and growing underclass, a voluntary army has no hope of growing.

 

To give the opposition their due, over a year ago, Noman Soloman - with a local leftist group - wrote and linked to an interview with an Iraqi defector (UN document, 1999?) posted ar FAIRs website. The defector stated that Saddam had no WMDs, that they had all been destroyed. The interviewer pressed him. The defector was, as far as I could tell, unresponsive to the issue of these weapons disposal as required under UN resolutions. In other words he could not - or would not - explain how or where they went! Only that Saddam no longer had them.

So even scepticism towards what was known didn't solve the problem of knowing what Saddam had and did not have. Apparently, either Saddam was duped by his underlings or else he too wanted to appear strong and saved face (in a culture that highly values face) for its strategic value.

--Orson

 

Ahh...yes. Right-wing paradise, where the only shred of the Constitution left is the Second Amendment and cops run the streets gunning down those they "suspect" of being drug dealers and terrorists (based on racial profiling, of course.)

 

Ah...yes. Left-wing paradise, where every infant is shredded in its own mother's womb.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good Response

So, you must have respect for President Bush, who served in the Air National Guard, unlike President Clinton, who never donned his nation's uniform. Right?

At least we agree on something. The Post is a liberal rag, and I would be disappointed to see them publish anything favorable to the President.

Someone with a big dime, of course. I'm not going to deny that connections help when applying to elite schools. However, my sister-in-law earned her MBA from Harvard Business School, and I asked her if a dime would help beyond admisson. She admitted that connections would help a lot during admissions, but that there was no slack given whatsoever to anyone in the program. One of her classmates was Abagail Johnson, whose father founded Fidelity Investments. She was given no quarter at all. Like it or not, President Bush earned his MBA from one of the most prestigious business schools in the world.

Of course, he's still a moron, even though he has a Harvard MBA and speaks 2 languages.

You don't consider 86% "overwhelming"????

 

You can't be serious....do you actually think that I want to kill drug dealers on-sight?

I was using an analogy to terrorists....kill them while in the act of attacking our forces, and the problem is solved.

Just for the record, I couldn't care less if marijuana was legalized tomorrow. I wouldn't use it, since I hate all types of smoke, but I would much rather deal with someone who just smoked a bowl than someone who just drank a 12-pack.

As for the harder drugs (cocaine, heroin, Oxycontin, etc.), I would support the death penalty for repeat offenders. I've seen the destruction and misery that dealers cause, and eliminating them from the gene pool would be a most beneficial thing.

 

Sorry

Maybe most of the people joining the military are from the lower middle class but so is most of society in the lower middle class. Many people in poverty are also uneducated and cannot qualify for the military so they don't get in as often as people believe. Believe it or not, quit a few upper middle class join the military and a lot of go into combat arms. It is often pointed out that when someone joins for a career, as someone looking for a way out does, they opt for support jobs where casualties are lower. When someone joins for adventure, "be all you can be", they go into combat arms. I joined the 101st Abn as a scout in 1978 to be "a soldier, pure and simple". Many of my fellow scouts were young middle class guys just looking for something to get them away from home for awhile and most of us were middle class guys from rural or small urban America. Our officers were most often from upper middle class. This the view folks from the ground. Where are the statistics which show that only the poor and minorities serve in the military?